Mathematician and astronomer; b. c. 262 BC (Perga, Pamphylia, Anatolia) d. c. 190 BC (Alexandria)
Apollonius was born in Perga on the southwestern Mediterranean coast of today's Turkey. He studied in Alexandria, according to Pappus attending classes of students of Euclid. After his studies he visited the recently established university and library of Pergamum, the capital of a Greek kingdom in north-western Anatolia. The visit must have made a lasting impression on him, since he dedicated several books of his major work to the king of Pergamum. But he eventually returned to Alexandria and took up a teaching position there.
Only two of Apollonius' many works survived; but the major one of these, titled Conics, made him famous throughout the Hellenistic world as "The Great Geometer". In 8 books Conics treated the theory of conical sections and introduced the terms papabola, ellipse and hyperbola. Apollonius acknowledged earlier studies by Euclid and others and expanded their work in brilliant ways, showing true geometrical genius. The first 4 books survived in the Greek original, books 5 - 7 in Arabic translation; book 8 is lost.
Ptolemys Almagest credits Apollonius with the concept of epicycles, which forms the basis of Ptolemy's solar system.